


i should know you better

by ilgaksu



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Punk, M/M, small town punks in love: the au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 07:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5408342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bokuto’s sick of waiting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i should know you better

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ryonello](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ryonello).



Bokuto hears the doorbell ring downstairs; he tells himself it’s the sudden noise that makes his hand shake, and not the anticipation curling low in his stomach; he smears his eyeliner. The slick of it jerks across his face like the opening of a wound.

_Fuck_ , he thinks. _Exactly_ , he thinks. His skin goes hot. The prickle of it races across his skin and he blinks, surprised by the rapidity of it, of the feeling.

He stays by the bathroom mirror and doesn’t try to look out of the window: the glass is frosted, frozen into a chintz floral pattern, but he imagines he’d be able to see the beat-up olive of Kuroo’s piece-of-shit truck anyway. His own eyes are moon-bright in the mirror, the pupils of them heady as his pulse, and he tries to steady his hand again. He can hear the door being unlatched though, and he stops, kohl curled in his fingers, to listen.

“Hey, ma’am,” he hears, and his breath catches. Kuroo always manages to say ma’am with just the right edge of respect before it’s parody; it’s why middle-aged ladies coo at him as he carries their shopping bags to their cars for them, despite the metal in his skin and the ink of his eyes. “Is Bokuto ready? I’ll wait.”

Swallowing the heart in his mouth is hard, so Bokuto doesn’t, calls around it instead.

“Come on up,” he manages, hoping the thread of his voice sounds taut to someone else, at least; the clatter of Kuroo’s boots up the tiny suburban stairs sets up a rhythm inside Bokuto’s ribs. _I’ll wait,_ Kuroo always says, hovering at the boundary of white-picket fences to say goodnight, hovering next to Bokuto’s locker at school with that stupid shit-eating grin, hovering over Bokuto in the backseat of his fucked-up truck with a voice that is barely there. _I’ll wait, I’ll wait, I’ll wait._

Bokuto’s sick of waiting. Bokuto’s eighteen years old, and he’s scared of dying in this town, and Kuroo’s smile is like sunburn against his skin: it hurts, but in this confusing, satisfying way that sticks around for days and days and days. Growing old is still imaginary for Bokuto, in the way a fairy story is, hazy and in a far-off land he has not entered yet, but the shadow Kuroo throws is so distinctive he’s started seeing it there, the silhouette of some babypunk boy in his dreams.

Speak of the devil and the devil shall apppear: Kuroo appears in the mirror’s reflection, framed in the doorway like a picture postcard, _wish you were here_ and the taste of salt. Bokuto smiles without thinking, always smiles without thinking, smiles over the tremble in his legs when Kuroo smiles back.

“Wow,” Kuroo says, without moving further into the bathroom, “That sure is some fucked-up eyeliner you’ve got going on there.”

“Wow,” Bokuto replies, “That sure is some fucked-up face you’ve got going on there.”

Kuroo’s answering grin is feral. He saunters in, then, all liquid hips and eyes, and Bokuto tries to swallow the heart in his mouth again, but it won’t stay down, it won’t ever stay down around Kuroo Tetsurou, and -

“You _love_ this fucked-up face,” Kuroo says, half-taunting, “I’m your _favourite_ fucked-up face.”

“It’s a small town,” Bokuto retorts, and Kuroo’s laugh is sudden, as though shocked out of him, his eyes bright and delighted.

“Just a sec,” Kuroo says, and then takes his thumb to his mouth and licks it.

“What the fuck,” Bokuto says, eloquently. His mind is hooked back on that moment, skipping like the needle on a faulty record, the sharp line of Kuroo’s mouth and the glimmer of teeth like challenge. Kuroo shrugs and brings his thumb to Bokuto’s face, carefully wipes at where the wing of Bokuto’s eyeliner has gone haywire. Bokuto had forgotten about that, and almost forgets about it again with Kuroo so close, Kuroo’s breath on his mouth, Kuroo’s hand sliding back to cup his jaw. Bokuto lets his eyes slide closed on a shaky exhale and feels Kuroo shiver and lean their foreheads together.

Three hours ago, Bokuto rang up Kuroo and said _I’ve been getting tired of watching you wait,_ and Kuroo, with a smile you could hear through the static, said _I guess then I’ve been getting tired of waiting._ There’s a blanket in the back of Kuroo’s piece-of-shit truck, and when Bokuto slips his hand into Kuroo’s back pocket, Kuroo sighs against his mouth and Bokuto can feel the plastic dip of the condoms against his fingertips.

“Someone’s got high hopes for tonight,” Bokuto murmurs and Kuroo pulls back a bit, scrubs his hand through his hair and looks away. When he flushes, his freckles show up more, like a developing photograph. He opens his mouth, closes it, wets his lips and stares at Bokuto, deer-eyed, and -

_Are you nervous,_ Bokuto wants to ask, _do you think about this like I think about this, are you nervous, there’s no rehearsal, do you think about what we’re going to do to each other and what we could do and how it’s all in the wake of what we’ve already done, do you overthink this like I overthink this?_

When Kuroo brings his hand back from his hair, he doesn’t seem to know where to put it; Bokuto sees the tremor in it before he hooks his thumb into his belt, like it’s for safekeeping, like he’ll forget what to use his hand for if he keeps it between them both like this. And suddenly, Bokuto doesn’t have to ask, but he does anyway, just to make sure, just to make clear.

“Are you nervous?”

“Always,” Kuroo says, without missing a beat, and his eyes are black holes and Bokuto keeps fucking falling. “Want to go for a ride?”

Bokuto’s sick of waiting. Bokuto’s eighteen years old, and he’s scared of dying, in this town or otherwise, but Kuroo’s mouth makes him think about immortality and that’s good enough for him. He ducks under Kuroo’s arm and away, catches a flash of his own face in the mirror, a slice of startled recognition. The eyeliner’s not right still. Bokuto gives it up.

“Kou,” Kuroo begins, turning to look at Bokuto in the doorway, reversal, inversion (and that’s how they work, it’s how they’ve always worked, refracted even as they’re in sync).

“Come on,” Bokuto says, and grabs the keys from Kuroo’s other hand, all scuffed black nailpolish and dull metal. “Let’s go.”

He starts off down the stairs, young and iron-strong and unafraid, reeling and in love with the fact he knows Kuroo will follow: he doesn’t even have to look.


End file.
